Terrorists attack pilgrims returning froma visit to the Anba Samuel the Confessor monastery southeast of Cairo

Seven Egyptian Christians were murdered on Friday in an ambush by suspected Islamist terrorists in Egypt’s Minya province. On 2 Nov 2018 three buses carrying pilgrims home from a visit to the Saint Samuel the Confessor monastery, (pictured) about 150 miles southeast of Cairo, were ambushed by gunmen wearing military uniforms. The Islamic State (Daesh) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Six of the victims were members of one family and were buried on 3 Nov 2018 at the Coptic Orthodox church of al-Amir Tadros in Minya at a funeral led by 10 bishops. The seventh victim, the bus driver, was buried from Minya’s Protestant Evangelical church — initial news reports identified the driver as an Anglican, but the Diocese of Egypt reports this was a mistranslation from Arabic by the media of the word “evangelical”.

Mourners at the funeral expressed outrage at the government’s failure to prevent the attack, which was carried out in the same area as a May 27 ambush that killed 28 Christian pilgrims.

On 4 Nov 2018 the Interior Ministry said Egyptian forces had killed 19 militants in a pursuit through a mountainous area in the desert west of the monastery. Photographs released by the government showed the bodies of several dead terrorists purported to have been killed in the firefight, but no details were provided.

The Fides news service reported that at Saturday’s funeral Anba Macarius, Coptic Orthodox bishop of Minya, announced plans to build a church where the remains of the Copts killed in the ambush, already celebrated as martyrs will be interred.